Another Brick in the Wall
by Chewing Gum
Summary: Sherlock Holmes is about to return from his three-year Hiatus when he learns of the death of Mary Watson and, realizing how distant he has been from the world, is flung into blackness. He awakes in a courtroom. Inspired by Pink Floyd's "The Wall".
1. Leave the Show

_AN: I know what you're thinking. "Chewing Gum, you have too many stories on the go and quite frankly, you need quality to go with that quantity." To my credit, I never intended to post this. Why? Because it makes "Paternity" look normal. I wrote it for practise when I mixed up two AIM conversations, one about Sherlock Holmes and one about "The Wall". To sum this story up, it's a kind-of-not song fic about the span of time between when Holmes was told he could return to London to the moment before he reveals himself to Watson. I say kind-of-not song fic because while it does contain song lyrics, they are widely spaced and the majority are contained within dialogue. All lyrics will be in bold, and are from the last three songs on the album "The Wall" by Pink Floyd. The song featured in this chapter is "Stop".  
_

_This story is dedicated to the memory of Richard Wright, Pink Floyd founder, whose passing prompted me into posting this. You do not ever need to have heard the songs to read this, but I recommend you do (warning, while said three songs are reasonably clean, other Pink Floyd songs usually aren't). I'm writing with the Berlin recording in mind, not the original. This takes place in no previously established fan fiction universe. There will be nine chapters in total. I hope you enjoy; this was interesting to write, to say the least.  
_

JACOB

ALTHOUGH YOU HAVE TIME OFF REMAIN WHERE YOU ARE STOP OUR COUSINS ARE VISITING AND WE HAVE NO ROOM FOR YOU STOP HOTELS ARE TOO EXPENSIVE THIS TIME OF YEAR STOP MY STOCKS ARE GROWING STOP THERE IS HOPE FOR MY FORTUNE YET STOP

WILHELM

He was living under the name Jacob Hanau, and that was who the telegram was addressed to, but under the fake, thick brow and the deplorable sideburns lurked a man whose death had flung London into a state of mass mourning three years previously.

He had been in France four months in his current guise to help with the capture of a particularly gruesome serial killer, and now it appeared that he was to be there a while longer. When Mycroft said the cousins were visiting, it meant that foreign diplomats were pressuring him. His brother was more optimistic than he; he could foresee at light at the end of the tunnel. After three years, Holmes was not so sure.

Moriarty had been smashed like a bowl of eggs at the bottom of Reichenbach, but he had left many behind who all wished to finish off the detective. The evil, spiteful man had left them books of his hideaways and even some of his code with his brother to help them in their pursuit and it was given to many after his death was confirmed.

If the professor could not kill Holmes himself, he wanted the deed done by anyone who could read and pick up a dagger.

**Stop**

Holmes had a tiny desk at the Sûreté headquarters on which he kept his pens, four of which were filled with poison rather than ink, and a framed picture of three people who were not his parents and younger sister. He had paperwork he pretended to fill out but was actually done by toadying officers-in-training who did not know why he was excused from such menial tasks.

Jacob Hanau was born in Germany, moved to England then to France. He had been with Scotland Yard a good many years, as his file would say. The top brass at the Yard did not know who Inspector Hanau was, only that if they wished to keep their jobs they would give him a glowing review.

He wore a smart-looking uniform and all the of the secretaries tittered when he was around because he was such an amiable chap when other people were around. He was bright but not too bright; he hinted others off as to his deductions so that he would not stand out. He had a solitary flat that his landlady cleaned every two days and there was a café just around the corner from it that made excellent coffee.

It was a quiet existence. Not without its excitement, which was what kept him sane when he knew his Boswell suffered from the loss of him. There was also the fact that Watson had a wife to take comfort and shelter in.

His main work was over, but Mycroft told him to stay put. He may have defied his brother had he not known the consequences his actions would have on the world stage. Whitehall simply could not deal with his re-emergence and the international demands at the same time.

**I wanna go home**

He trudged home in the aftermath of a rainstorm. His cuffs were getting wet but he did not care. He tipped his hat to the giggling women, he clapped a fellow inspector on the shoulder and congratulated him on a recent case an idiot could have solved, and he held the door open for some high-ranking director's wife and tipped his hat to her as well, which made her blush but smile.

In short, he was unlike himself in every way. He had to be. He had arrested two men in the last three months who had been plotting to track him down. Instead of going to his superiors, they went to French Whitehall representatives. They would likely be convicted as weak-minded. How could one kill a man who was already dead?

Holmes longed for London. For all its dirt and smoke and depravity, he loved the city. Perhaps it was because of all that that he loved it. He dreamed of the day he would reveal himself to Watson, to once again be among the living, to give up the charade.

For the moment, however, there were worse things he could have been doing. The missions up until France had not been at all pleasant, and as the time wore on and the date when he would meet with Watson again drew nearer, he began to dare to hope, as opposed to those cold nights huddled in a shelter when the loneliness would gnaw at his stomach so furiously it would physically hurt him.

He fancied himself to be a heartless brain, but on those long, inky nights he would have given his very soul for a rare embrace from his brother and a pipe shared with Watson by a crackling fire.

One night he had woken in the mud, swearing he had heard Mrs. Hudson complaining about his mess.

The nightmares were less frequent now, although he often came to with an unsettling jolt. Hearing Watson or Mrs. Hudson or even Lestrade when it was merely a stranger had not quite ceased but was beginning to. His life was settling, and yet he did not deem those years his true life.

Telegrams usually came once every two weeks directly from Mycroft if nothing was wrong. It had only been a week and a half, but there was a yellow envelope slipped under the door of his flat, rain-splattered and foreboding.

JACOB

DORTHEAS HUSBAND HAS DIED OF CANCER STOP SHE IS DOING AS WELL AS TO BE EXPECTED STOP IF YOU AGREE I BELIEVE IT IS TIME FOR YOU TO RETURN STOP IF NO RESPONSE I WILL FETCH YOU IN A WEEKS TIME STOP

WILHELM

Holmes had never appreciated Watson's codename, but that was the last thing on his mind when his flint eyes scanned the words moments before his breath was drawn from him.

He had mentioned she was sick before they had left for their last case... He had seemed so worried, and his closest friend, his Jonathon Boswell, had told him not to worry, that it was likely womanly problems.

The case had been more important. Moriarty had to be stopped. And now he was alone.

**Take off this uniform**

He all but tore his uniform coat from his lean back, flinging it in the general direction of the coat tree. It hit the wall, brass buttons making a brief clatter there and then another when they made contact with the hardwood in a dully-coloured heap.

He then threw himself on the settee hard enough to make it lurch forward, though he hardly noticed this. His face met with the rough fabric, not caring for the abrasion as he hid his face from observers who were not even present.

This was not his apartment. This was not him. This was not Sherlock Holmes behaving so childishly. This was Jacob Hanau's apartment, and these were his swirling, engulfing emotions. Sherlock Holmes was a heartless brain. He had to be. Jacob Hanau was weaker.

But he was not real. He was as much as a uniform as the easily discarded coat, and at the moment Holmes was not sure if he wanted to rip his very skin apart to find his true self amongst the masquerade or to retreat to the depths of Hanau's mind and take refuge in such tawdry displays.

**And leave the show**

He did not mourn for Mary, not entirely. He was regretful for her death, but the sorrow that was threatening to fill his lungs and drown him was for the whole sordid charade that had started when his hurtling body struck an outlet of rock and spared him from a watery demise.

He had died that day, not in the Falls but somewhere between his fall and his landing. Sherlock Holmes died and was mourned, and a series of characters used his body as a masquerade costume after that. He had not permitted himself to be Sherlock Holmes since that day, because to do so would be to embrace all of Sherlock Holmes's memories.

No. This was not happening. Time rarely passed, and it was only in months when it did, not years. This was not real; merely a pantomime to amuse himself and the government, but it was a pantomime that simply could not end.

Not when the sorrow coming upon him was swelling with each wretched breath. He could not stand these revolting, crippling emotions, and yet when he gave a gasp to restrain tears, it was Sherlock Holmes, not Joseph Hanau, who wept.

**And I'm waiting here in this cell **

The room, once adequately large for a solitary bachelor but now threatening to crush him between its walls, at once ceased to be his humble home and began to be a dungeon. His chest tightened although he was not in any way claustrophobic.

Release. He needed release.

He had only used once since he had died, when he had been an old man with a mild fondness for the drug. Joseph Hanau did not get bored easily, however. He was a chap who loved far life far too much to skew it with narcotics, but Hanau lay in a pile, unseen, under his uniform jacket, and what remained of him was now fleeing from its physical form in hot, streaming tears.

He still kept it close, however. Just to remind himself that Sherlock Holmes had once existed. For now, it would serve as a jail key, but even he was unsure whether he was leaving the prison or entering it.

The cold metal slipped into its sheath of flesh, and soon the glorious and revolting drug mingled with his blood, becoming as much a part of it as the hormones that coursed through it.

He took too much. A part of him knew this, and another did not.

With his last dregs of strength, he slid down the papered wall of Joseph Hanau's flat, bowed his head, and closed his steel grey eyes.

**Because I have to know **

When he opened his eyes again, he was no longer leaning against a beige wallpaper. The stone was hard, rough, and the same colour as his eyes. His head rotated from left to right, and the high wall of smooth, huge bricks encircled him.

Benches appeared; first two rows of them, filled with blank-faced patrons, their rabble beginning faint but growing ever so gradually to a dull roar. Seats now, twelve of them, and twelve ordinary people, faces absent, entirely anonymous.

The towering pedestal of a judge. How many times had he been inside a courtroom? This environment was familiar, even comfortable. He rose, meaning to go to the gallery until he was told otherwise, perhaps to wait with the other witnesses.

He could not. He wore no physical chains, but he could not move more than three feet in either direction, held in place by some force he could not see.

He broke out into a cold sweat.

The judge appeared, huge and towering. What should have been a wig of powdered white was made of worms, yellow and withering, constantly moving yet not falling out of the shape of a judge's wig. The very sight of them made his stomach churn and toss. His robes were not a smart black, but rather the grey of a decayed funeral suit. His face could not be seen for the shadows, and yet his booming, horrible voice held enough to presume he was a fearful creature.

"We shall now begin the case," the judge all but hollered, silencing the jeering of the gallery. "The case of the Crown versus Sherlock Holmes!"

**Have I been guilty all this time...?**

Mycroft lied when he said he was coming in a week; he knew his brother would object to a sudden visit if he knew beforehand. In reality, the telegram had been sent by one of his employees after he had already boarded the fastest train there was to Paris. He found the apartment door left unlocked, something that bothered him to begin with.

When he entered, his sharp eyes fell upon the used needle and then upon his brother's pale form draped about the floor, his narrow chest heaving up and down, his eyes rolled back in his head.

"Sherlock...!"


	2. Worm, Your Honour

Holmes attempted to approach the judge, but his unseen bonds held him in place. "Me…! Sir, Your Honour, I can't be…"

This was not right. He was no criminal! He had spent the majority of his life putting away dangerous men, men who violated the law and the lives of those around them. His entire life had been dedicated to bringing justice! How could _he_ be on trial?

He had broken the law. He knew this and accepted this. All those times he had picked a lock, shimmed open a door, climbed through a window, lied, cheated, and done everything possible to obtain evidence. He had killed, but only ever in self defence and when the man had an execution order on his head.

Was this what this was all about? Was this his bending of the laws finally catching up with him? Was this his punishment?

_Punishment_…

Holmes gave a start. _Was_ this his final punishment? Was this _Hell_?

In frustration he threw himself forward, only to be yanked back by chains that could not so much as be gazed upon. "Do you know who I _am_?!"

There was a roar of laughter from the gallery, and even snickering from the stony jury, and the judge had to bang his gavel several times, each one a clap of thunder, to restore order. "Mister Prosecutor, if you would be so kind…?"

"**Good morning, Worm, Your Honour,**" came a voice greeting the judge from Sherlock's left, a confident baritone, unaffected by the chaos of the setting.

When he glanced over, he saw a sight for sore eyes. A very familiar face, and a very welcome one. So welcome, in fact, that he nearly wept for joy.

It was Mycroft. The portly man was clothed in a lawyer's robes, pressed and perfectly black, a cloak of blood red trailing down his back. His fleshy face was still, emotionless, and he did not so much as look his brother's way.

"Mycroft!" Holmes called out, attempting to go to him but again restrained.

The prosecutor slowly turned his head to look at the man, but instead of giving one of the rare, warm smiled he reserved for his brother, his lip merely curled into a disgusted sneer, and he turned his gaze back to the judge.

"Mycroft…" It was a feeble and desperate plea. His knees felt weak, and the detective nearly fell to the floor. It was as if someone had reached into his chest and taken hold of his heart. His brother… His beloved older brother, reliable Mycroft, his prosecutor… This simply could not be!

Not so much as a glimmer of anything resembling a reaction passed over the man's face, and yet he was so thoroughly his brother he could not imagine it would be an impostor. It was not only his appearance; he held himself the same, that intelligence beneath the waters of his eyes was the same…

And yet he did not help him.

"State your case, Mr. Prosecutor," ordered the shadow judge with another hammer of gravel on wood, leaning forward, yellow, aging hands folding as if for grace before a meal.

Mycroft drew himself up to his full, impressive height, his hands coming to be behind his back as he strolled the length of the courtroom in his leisurely way, addressing the jury in the measured tones of a lawyer. "**The Crown will plainly show the prisoner who now stands before you was caught red-handed showing **_**feelings**_**.**" The last word was spat out with as much hate as the large man could muster, and his eyes, narrowing and as cold as ice, were once again on his forlorn brother as if he loathed the very presence of him.

Holmes backed away from him as far as his confinement would allow. _This_ was his crime? How could that be? He did not have feelings, not true ones. There were those faked emotions that allowed him to become character after character, but they could not begrudge him those! Those were needed!

He was a heartless brain; this was one of the few crimes he could be unjustly charged with.

_Is that really true? _A small voice in his head, that angel (or was it the devil?) on his shoulder, was prodding at him. _You _wept_. You wept for your lost friendship and for your lost life. You _felt _something you have denied for so long…_

"No…!" he called out aloud. "I don't _feel_…! I don't…"

"**Showing feelings**," the prosecutor continued, glaring at him for silence as if he were a child who was not respecting his elders."**Of an almost… **_**human**_** nature.**" He gave a guffaw, turning to the jury with a cruel smirk twisted upon his wide face. "Well!** This will not do!**"

"I _don't feel_!" Holmes cried out, throwing himself upon the floor, burying his face in his hands. He did not have emotions, especially not now. He had characters; he had faked little quirks, but emotions… The last time he had felt anything it had been regret as he hurtled over that cold cliff.

But what would one call that display before he had sent that blissful drug coursing through his veins? That horrible, gut-wrenching experience of utter loathing of himself, of loneliness, of longing…

"Your Honour… Worm…" That was what Mycroft had called him, was it not? It seemed appropriate, considering the twitching mass of insects that made up his wig. "Surely there has been some mistake… I am a heartless brain! Barely human!"

The judge's face could not be seen, but Holmes could imagine he was wearing a smirk similar to the prosecutor's. "There are no mistakes in my court, Mr. Holmes." He turned to one of the faceless creatures, one in a uniform. "Bailiff!** Call the schoolmaster!**"

A thin man with a highly domed forehead came forward from the very stones of the wall, his eyes fixed on the shivering detective from the very beginning. They had once been green, but now they were dead with the length of his stay in the grave. Mould tarnished his brown scholar's suit, which was dripping wet and torn in many places. His fingernails were yellowed and stained. When he smiled, his teeth were the same. He was far younger than he had been on the day of his death.

"The Crown presents Professor Moriaty," boomed Mycroft, folding his hands calmly behind his back.

Holmes was now sure he was in Hell.


	3. Bleeding Hearts and Artists

Thin, spindly and foreboding, the dead men strode into the courtroom on hushed feet, making almost no noise. His head movements, developed after his days as a schoolmaster, were now almost frantic as he rested his glimmering and yet glazed eyes upon the accused.

"No…" Holmes whispered, lifting his head up although it felt as if it was filled with lead. It brought him physical pain to look into such hateful eyes, but he bore it_. "__No_! You're _dead_! You can't call a dead witness!"

Mycroft tilted his head. "Worm, Your Honour?"

"I allow the witness," the beast proclaimed, creating thunder between his gavel and the wooden surface. "Professor Moriarty to the stand, please, and let us keep the delays to a minimum, lest the gallery grow restless!"

The Crown prosecutor gave a smug smirk, nodding his witness to the stand. "Your name is Professor James Moriarty. Correct?"

"Correct…" replied the blackguard. Holmes had been expecting a death rattle, or at least the gasped voice the professor had in more recent years, but his voice was strong, confident, as it had been when the foes had first met.

"Would you please show the court how you first made the acquaintance of the accused, Mr. Sherlock Holmes?"

"_Show the court…?" Surely he means…_

The detective was sure he had closed his eyes, but they were wide open when the courtroom swirled into a blur. When it cleared, he was no longer in the courtroom at all. He was standing in front of an ancient building whose iron gate read "Hawthorne Academy".

His childhood institution. His mother had wanted him to continue being schooled at home under her own hand, but she had died the year previous and his father claimed he desperately needed socialization. It was a highly exclusive school, only accepting the brightest young men. A glowing recommendation from his elder brother had secured his future there, although he was sure Mycroft had only written it to pry him from the house he had grown up in and the last traces of his mother's affections.

"**I always said he'd come to no good in the end, Your Honour**," Moriaty's voice drifted through his mind, omnipresent and yet somehow not present at all, as the scene changed to settle him inside the building. Rows of boys in the slate grey blazers, possessing various degrees of alertness.

His first mathematics class. He had never been in a room with so many people, let alone so many boys his same age, before. This was not the environment he knew. This was entirely new.

"Ah, and the next version of the Holmes legacy joins us," the young professor had greeted him, striding through the aisle to stop at his desk, where a mussy-headed boy was trying his hardest to become invisible. "So, Master Holmes, are you as much of a genius as your brother?"

"My brother is not a genius," he replied softly, his mother's words ringing within his head even as her body was surrendered to the worms.

A narrow brow was arched, a twisting smile forming. "The tests all say he is. The government went to unprecedented lengths to employ him. Would you not call his talents genius?"

"No," Sherlock said, unrelenting. "He is not a genius." His young face was set in far more serious an expression than a boy should be able to achieve.

The smile remained. "Well, if you do not think him all that special, I am anxious to see what your mind holds." In truth, he was anxious to see how much his mind could handle. Moriarty had been too late to pick apart the elder brother; he would merely have to content himself with what he had.

"**If they'd let me have my way**," the dead professor murmured in Holmes's ear, causing him to shudder violently."**I could have flayed him into shape**. He did not go rouge for lack of me trying, Your Honour, you simply must know that. I _wanted _to see him on the straight and narrow. **But my hands were tied**…"

He was constantly trouble, this thin boy who denied his brother's brilliance out of pure hate and spite, who was always marking up the desk with riddles and anagrams. He was insolent, delivering answers with too much pride. The teacher's head spun every few seconds in which there was silence, always expecting him to be up to something.

He beat him once after an incident in which Master Sherlock had corrected him quite sarcastically in front of an entire class of boys, more than willing to mock one of the very few mistakes their professor had ever made. Moriarty had kept him after class and taken a thick ruler to his back.

Holmes cringed as the classroom flickered into pain. He remembered each stroke, not injuries near what he would receive later in life, but no one had ever raised a hand to him before and therefore this pain was intolerable to him. Now it took on its youthful intensity, twisting around his spine like the red around a candy cane, making him gasp and run with cold sweat.

Directly after the beating, not severe by any means and arguably well deserved, Sherlock had run to the Headmaster's office. The man had been keeping on eye on the boy, and in his eyes he could do no wrong. How could he be as horrible as Professor Moriarty claimed when his brother had been so mannered and civil?

The young professor had been suspended for a week without pay. This lasted five short school days, but the message it sent was far more lasting. Sherlock Holmes was now the golden boy of Hawthrone; although not as apt as his brother, his talent would not be ignored, and therefore anything that occurred to him to lessen him opinion of the academy was frowned upon by the Headmaster. From that day on, he had reigns of the school, and to preserve his good graces, the only one he tormented was one Professor James Moriarty.

"We see today, however, that selfishness and such blunt rebellion are not part of the accused persona," spoke the voice of the prosecutor, the tone of his question one of a man who already knew the answer. "What changed?"

A cold, chilling chuckle. "The _fire_…"

His chill was engulfed in stifling, suffocating heat. There had been five boys in the chemistry laboratory performing an experiment under the eye of their teacher after missing the class due to a field trip with the English class. One moment they had been quietly at work, the next there was a hiss of the gas line and then the rocking, sudden presence of fire that would forever stay with the two boys that survived.

Sherlock Holmes was one of them, but in the twenty-four hours following the pair's hasty escape out a second story window (Holmes had broken two of his ribs, the other boy his arm and a cracked skull to boot), he began to wish he had.

The other boy, someone Holmes barely knew, had murmured something about it being Holmes's fault in his feverish and concussed state. It was not true; the boy was rebellious but not evil. In the wake of the deaths of a teacher and three students, however, there was scramble to blame anyone, and one of the older quarters for lower teachers made a handy cell.

Moriarty was the one to bring the boy food and news. He did it not out of kindness but to mock him relentlessly. His joy swelled as the brilliant Sherlock Holmes began to retreat further and further into his mind, separating himself from the world.

It took three days for the public to get the full story of what happened. Mycroft Holmes arrived at the school on the fourth day.

The staff scraped to obey him, showing him the crime scene, tutting over how a genius's brother could go so wrong. Perhaps from jealousy? The elder had rarely mentioned the younger, and the younger seemed downright resentful of the elder.

Mycroft Holmes rarely heard a word. Within three hours, he had three pages filled with the reasons why his brother could not be guilty. The main reason being that the explosion had occurred in the lab beside the one the doomed boys had been working it; a loose gas line had finally given way, and somehow in all the mess, watery grey eyes had picked out a miniscule match head someone had carelessly tossed through the window so as not to litter the ground.

The boy was released. When he was, he was bleeding and bruised. Had he been guilty, Moriarty would not have been so much as slapped on the wrist for disciplining him with physical force. Now that he was innocent, he was fired, his name tarnished in nearly every school in England. He left, still protesting Sherlock's guilt.

Sherlock watched him leave from his dorm room. When he could no longer see the hansom, he turned to face his saviour. It was the first time the Holmes brothers had ever embraced.

The scene trickled back to the courtroom, and despite the fact that he knew it was nothing more than a flimsy illusion, Holmes was mournful to leave his brother's protective arms.

Moriarty, now returned to the witness stand, wore a similar expression, likely stinging with the memory of his first tangle with Sherlock Holmes as well as his public disgrace."**The bleeding hearts and artists let him get away with murder**," he sighed, raising his rotting head to scan the gallery, where there were murmurs of sympathy. Then his oscillating head turned towards the shadowy judge, and a smile slithered upon his face. "Oh, Worm, Honour, make him pay! He deserved the worst! I failed then, and at the Falls, but **let me hammer him today**…!"

"That will be for the jury to decide, Professor," spoke Mycroft, no longer the loving older brother but once again the stone-faced prosecutor. "Thank you for your time, Professor Moriarty. The witness is dismissed."

In a mist of mustard yellow, he was gone more quickly than he had come.


	4. Toys in the Attic

Mycroft Holmes sat in the uncomfortable metal chair in the Parisian hospital, hands folded neatly over his ample stomach, his watery grey eyes closed to the world and all around him. His breath slow and his face unresponsive, the casual observer might think him in deep sleep.

In reality, Mycroft was very much awake, his mind burning with the friction of an unstoppable force meeting an unmoveable object, impossible but formidable opponents duelling in the question of the ages.

And was that not the prefect description for Sherlock Holmes? An unstoppable force? His brother believed so. Not even a plunge from the top of a waterfall had ceased his heart or his drive. The very thing he survived, his own death, became the immoveable object, however. Not being able to contact his grieving friend, not being able to hear his real name, the beginnings of questioning his own existence to the point that he either believed he could survive such a massive intake of his drug or did not care if he lived through it.

**Crazy.**

Mycroft did not want to believe his brother had attempted suicide. Simply because he did not want to believe it, however, did not mean he was not considering it a possibility. He was no fool, he knew how entangled the heartstrings of his brother and Dr. John Watson were. They had been comrades-in-arms for years, had shared a living space when no other man would tolerate a household with the detective in it, and had placed one another's lives in the other's hand with pure, unwavering trust.

Now Dr. Watson was alone, without wife, without friend. Perhaps in learning of his loneliness, the solitude of Sherlock's own false life had come crashing down upon him. Occasional visits and bi-monthly letters from his brothers, midnight meetings with agents he might never see again… It could wear upon even the self-proclaimed heartless brain.

The so-called auditor was beginning to contemplate his own involvement in the tragedy of errors. The missions for the government had been a suggestion, not an order. He and Sherlock had agreed that London was not yet safe for him, and both knew that the younger brother could not simply sit and twiddle his thumbs for god knows how long.

But there had been delay after delay… Perhaps it would have been safe for him to come back earlier, just maybe… But Mycroft had fretted so, had perhaps tilted the odds towards the more dangerous spectrum because of his relationship to the would-be target. No matter how old they were, no matter the titles and fame each had garnered for themselves, Sherlock was still his little brother and there was still an overwhelming sense of duty in Mycroft to shield him as much as possible from the forces of evil.

He had held such feelings since his brother had been born, but had only be permitted to act on them after the fire.

**Toys in the attic, I am crazy.**

At first his mother, Sherlock's, not Mycroft's, had prevented him from so much as talking alone with his brother. The two had different mothers; either Sherlock had never mentioned that to Watson or the doctor had tastefully left it out of the detective's memoirs.

Personally, Mycroft believed his mother had been prettier. Pieced together memories and photographs showed her as a slightly plump woman, her weight carried well on her tall but traditional frame. Her hair had been blonde (that he remembered clearly), and her eyes a wonderful shade of blue (that his father had needed to tell him).

Rachael Holmes had died when her son was not yet four in horribly timed childbirth, the child old enough to make her bleed in excessive but too young to survive.

His father had married a beautiful but sharp-faced local woman by the name of Katherina, a woman already widowed once by a London lawyer, her inheritance after unknown debts forcing her to return to the despised small town. A boy quickly followed, premature but healthy (some muttered about town that he was healthy because he was not as premature as some fictional dates of conception would imply, but of course one could not prove such a thing).

Katherina had made several things clear to Mycroft. She was not his mother and he was not to treat her like one. She did not like him, she had heard the stories about the village that he was far too wise for his age, that there was something horribly odd about him. She also made it perfectly clear that her child would be "the" child, that he was merely a practise run.

His father was barely home enough to question his new wife, and not nearly strong enough.

Mycroft had not been deprived; far from it. Anything he requested, his father gave him. He built his own little kingdom in the never-used attic of the house, in his bedroom, and in the small room between his door and the shaky ladder to the attic. He rarely left this tight little loop of existence, the servants taking him his meals or serving him before dawn or long after the set of the sun.

The boy was a quick learner. When he ventured from his strict, meek routine he was the object of a vicious beating, perhaps coupled with a slew of insults. He was lazy, fat, good for nothing. A gift from the Devil, an evil creature with brains to entice the innocent. His mother had been a Jew, a common Jew.

He only spoke back once. He stated that Katherina herself bore the traditionally Jewish nose. He had been raked across the face with her horribly manicured nails. Mycroft later realized only luck had prevented him from being blinded.

He did not antagonize her further after that. He had all he needed; he would stay within his place. That did not always work.

**Truly gone fishing.**

The bitch had nearly drowned him; there was no nicer way to say it. Even at fourteen he had possessed such callous, outright crass thoughts among beautiful theorems and formulas.

He had forgotten to lock the attic trapdoor, that had been his only crime. He locked it only out of habit of protecting his tiny space of power, for not even the servants went up there without good reason, and the servants never meant him any harm.

Sherlock had gotten up there and cut himself on a scalpel. He had come running to his mother, a wicked story far too poisonous for one his age. Evil brother had attacked him, that was all the woman heard.

Mycroft had been held under in her washing basin until his lungs has nearly burst for want of air. He believed only his nosebleed had saved him. She would have easily killed him silently without that streak of blood that would betray violence. She was such a strong woman, a smart woman, too, and she knew there were crimes that could not be gotten away with.

Two weeks of his life were wasted recuperating, yet his curses so rarely fell upon the little devil behind his foreboding mother. He was little but a well-trained lapdog.

**They must have taken my marbles away…**

Many years had passed in the lives of the Holmes brothers since the elder had been fourteen and the younger had been seven. More important, many events had passed.

Another man might distrust another who had crossed him so audaciously, even as a child. Mycroft would entrust his life to his little brother, and Sherlock would as well (and for much of the past three years often had). There had been much catching up on lost time after The Fire (Mycroft thought it deserving of capital letters as to distinguish such a monumental event from a fire in an empty warehouse or a fire burning meekly in the hearth). Their father had died shortly afterwards, an unrelated intestinal disease that had made quick work, and the debtors were quick to swoop to the warm carcass, legally so. Katherina Holmes had ran up amazing bills in her time as the squire's wife.

Mycroft salvaged what he could of the estate, more than most any man could. He was keen at budgeting and with a weaselled rise in pay courtesy of Her Royal Majesty's government, he was able to put his little brother in a fine London school. He could not afford board, however; they shared a tiny but modern apartment, and after several minor clashes and one major row, they settled into each other's patterns; Mycroft's adoration of them and Sherlock's complete lack of one.

And now he might die. The thought rattled the great man more than the trumpets of war. He had survived Sherlock's death once, but he was not sure if his mind could handle twice. And if it was by his own hand… His heart would forever remain in France, where he had kept his baby brother nestled away for far too long.


End file.
